Myanmar’s countryside is emptying and its cities bursting

WHEN SHE moved from her village to Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, Ma Thet Thet Nwe was afraid. Her husband had just died and she needed to provide for five children. She found work at a garment factory in Hlaingthaya, an industrial zone, and saved enough money to buy a one-room, bamboo house in a nearby shantytown. Now she is pleased with her lot. Two of her daughters work in garment factories, while she cares for her other children and runs a roadside café. Factory work is easy, she says with a smile—much better than toiling in the fields.

Ms Ma Thet Thet Nwe is part of a wave of migrants from the countryside to the city in the past decade. Data are sparse but a national census in 2014 found that out of a population of 50m, 9.2m people had moved townships (the equivalent of counties) in their lifetime. Of those, over one-third had moved since 2009, mostly to Yangon. One in three lived in cities.

Many were forced to leave their homes by Cyclone Nargis, which struck southern Myanmar in 2008, killing around 140,000 people. Hundreds of thousands were left destitute and moved to the cities to start over. But the disaster also laid bare the shortcomings of the country’s military dictatorship. In subsequent years the army relaxed its grip on power. Among other reforms, restrictions on internal migration were eased and...

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